


Sip on joy, the purest drink

by foughtyen



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Coming Out, F/M, Gen, Gender transition as ritual, Mostly Gen, Mostly Pre-Canon, POV Second Person, Trans Ashe Duran | Ashe Ubert, Trans Dedue Molinaro, Trans Female Character, Trans Male Character, supportive parents
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-03
Updated: 2021-02-03
Packaged: 2021-03-13 21:35:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29160528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foughtyen/pseuds/foughtyen
Summary: Memories from Dedue’s childhood: after a midnight visit to the temple with his parents, he emerges a new person.
Relationships: Ashe Duran | Ashe Ubert/Dedue Molinaro, Dedue Molinaro & Dedue Molinaro's Father & Dedue Molinaro's Mother
Comments: 4
Kudos: 17





	Sip on joy, the purest drink

_What is it?_ In your memory, your mother kneels with a candle by the bed. The clear liquid beneath the flame looks so much like tears. Even though most of your life was in daylight, it’s with this soft light that only arises as a product of wax and night that you remember her face, canvas on which time is just starting to draw lines of age.

You know your mother and father love you dearly—your sister hasn’t been born yet—but right now you are scared for all three of you. Your language has separate pronouns for groups of two that come from soldering together the words _we_ or _you_ and _both_ , but that system falls apart at three. You want a word to convey the inseparable, fused unit your family is. In your retellings you just do it. Maybe it will catch on with the children.

All of the tightness in your chest is about what this will mean for you, singular this time, not your family trio. There are stories of others like you in the margins, and sometimes even starring, but most are myths. They just don’t make people like the kind you think you are anymore. Why is it like this? How could having role models make it harder? You don’t know if you will live up to them.

You’re hot with nerves, slithering. You peel the wool blanket from your torso, where you’ve sweat through your evening top. Even as the evening chill rushes to embrace you, you hope you won’t be covering your chest much longer. It will be worth the goosebumps.

Your lips part before you speak. Sound only moves into the future and so will you. This time you mean three-you.

_I wanna be a boy, so that I’ll grow to be a man._

_Are you sure, —————?_ Your mother says your name, but it has gone to water in your memory, an echo of an echo. The blurring extends beyond the sound to the shape of her lips. They are formless in that moment only. You have forgotten it. When you tell this story in the language of Duscur, you twist the verb to indicate that you did it on purpose. Becoming who you are now was a deliberate act.

 _Okay, little bear_ , your mother whispers into the part of your hair. She stands and squeezes you to her stomach with the hand that’s not holding the candle. That’s how tall you are, your nose at her navel. 

Your hair, yes— it was at your chin when you first thought something might be unright, as the Duscur formation goes, and mid-back when months later unright slipped into wrong.

—————, _wake up_ ! Her belly moves with you against it. She calls your father’s name, which you have not let yourself think since he has died. You remember it, as you are allowed, but don’t say it or words that sound like it, as is custom. The dead and their rhymes should be allowed to rest. Your mother calls to both of you. _We must go to the temple_.

Your father wakes loudly. He has never had a subtle moment. _Why?_ he gravels, then the grumble of explanation, the braiding of high and low voice, your father agreeing _at once!_ swerving into the tying of shoes and the rustle of jackets. Suddenly you’re the least prepared to go, even though this is about you.

Your family’s horse monopolizes the noise of the night, hooves clopping a trail through a thick quiet. You remember his name too— the courtesy of name-rest doesn’t apply to animals, but it’s an unremarkable detail. You are not worried about your horse. The stars wink at you and you feel safe in that they don’t care. 

Your father holds the reins. You ride to his left, your mother to his right, her arm around your father’s back reaching to touch your shoulder. Her fingers move with the absentminded motions she uses when in her head she’s confronting problems. It’s the same motion she applies to your head in the silences when she argues politics with your father.

The town is soft and silent. Your parents don’t speak because they are as unsure as you. There is no script, so no one knows what to say. No one plans for this. Your father is a talkative man, but his jaw is tense and shut. His eyes focus on the road. 

You know it will be okay, but your stomach is in your throat because first it must be.

The temple is a wooden building covered in clay and paint, bold shapes and thick lines dancing across the facade in the geometry sacred to your people. You’ve never seen it in the dark, when swaths of it that are navy during the day seem to disappear.

Cinnamon and clove reach you before you reach the temple, an incursion of warmth in the outdoor cold. Inside is full of familiar soft candlelight. The floor is covered in equal parts by carpet and wood, with pillows stacked everywhere. The acolyte inside slouches drowsily with the hour, legs crossed uncomfortably. He stirs as your family enters the vestibule.

He yawns, which makes your father yawn, which makes your mother yawn, which makes you yawn. His voice is buoyant, high, like he forgot to weigh it down. It might float away. _Welcome. What brings you here?_

Your father speaks. Maybe it is the drowsiness in him, but he’s not as booming as you’d expect. _Our child wishes to cross_.

The acolyte ignores him and turns to you. _Do you want to cross?_

You don’t know what you’re supposed to say here, so you settle for _I want to be a man_. _Crossing_ sounds intimidating and implies distance. You just want to be.

There are holes in the conjugation patterns of verbs. For example, verbs of existence and attribute don’t bend to volitional markings. They are immune to attempts, accidents, mistakes. Even as a child you knew this, which is why what you said was more like, _I’m gonna man!_ You leave that out now because no one says that. It falls flat in Fódlan’s tongue.

The acolyte raises his eyebrows at your willingness to push forward, in grammar and in being. _I see_.

He looks at you, looks at more than you, so you look back. You look at his hair, shaved smooth to the sides of his scalp. You can’t remember your hair ever being so short, although your parents would recall that you were born bald.

 _I’m like you_ , the acolyte says. His smile reassures you more than his words. They float tectonically above a deeper gyre of rapport. You know that he was where you were, that there is a future where you are his age. If he learned from someone, who learned from someone, there is a chain of being and knowing and doing that you are joining. You aren’t going to be alone.

 _Please, one moment_. He turns his ankles and does all the things you do when your legs fall asleep criss-crossed.

Joints pop as he stands. He finds a small carved box and gives it to you. _Open it_.

Inside is a strange knife that folds out from its whalebone sheath, carved with simple lines at right angles to each other. Your throat thickens. Sometimes the gods have a cost. Blood is the currency for living things, what the elemental immortals envy. Again you remind yourself, if the acolyte made it through whatever trial there is, you can too.

 _What am I going to do with this?_ you don’t sound confident, but are prepared to pay. 

As the blade heats in your hands, the acolyte occupies himself mashing and mixing something in a shallow bowl, a paste he dilutes with water.

 _First, drink this._ He offers it to you and you gaze into it, seeing yourself.

The bowl has the same pattern around its rim as the knife has on its sheath. The liquid is as brown as your skin. It’s finally settling in that maybe you are scared, even if the acolyte is here, because you still don’t know what lies between being like you now and like him later. Your sour face or retracted arms must show that, because the acolyte chuckles and reassures you. _It’s mostly chocolate. It’s— I don’t think it’s part of the ceremony, but it was given to me when I was where you are and I felt better._

You take a sip. Hints of bitterness dance on your tongue. Someone didn’t add enough sugar, but sugar is expensive. The fact that the temple is just giving it to you is already testing your credulity. Again you wait for the cost to emerge. Still, it’s sweet enough that in net you feel better.

_Well?_

You squint at him. You sipped the chocolate water. That can’t be all. You know you’re not like him yet.

 _Good, good. if you didn’t want this, you wouldn’t have tried it._ He sprinkles something like gold lead, silver powder, and a milky liquid into what remains. _That really was just chocolate._ This _stuff is what will do it, spiritually. Won’t taste as good, but it won’t hurt either._

He lifts the bowl to your lips and you drink it all down. It’s a cacophony of textures. The liquid is oily and sticky. The unblended powder has a grainy texture like swallowing sand. Some of the foil catches on your teeth. You glitter inside as the concoction glitters outside, the same as a second ago but already very different.

You’re almost boastfully confident until your hand squeezes the small knife and you remember to be uneasy again.

 _It’s time_ , the acolyte says. 

_For what?_ You stare at the knife.

_To cut your hair. It’s not that bad, I just cut mine._

You touch the skin behind your ear, wondering what it will feel like when the wiry hair is gone. The acolyte offers the side of his head to you and taps a spot in invitation. It tickles your fingertips. Your nerves are jumping again, this time ecstatic. This is what you want, volitional verb ending want.

He gathers the hair on top of your head and pulls it tight enough that you grimace. It stays put when his hands move. he must have tied it. Scissors in his hand from you-don’t-know-where snip and snip and snip and you feel lighter and lighter. He shows you his clenched fist. Inches of your hair stick out on either side of his index finger and pinky. You will miss it, but you won’t miss it.

He rubs a foaming paste over what hasn’t already been wrangled. Then he takes the small knife and offers it to you. He taps the side of his head again, dragging the finger along the close-cut hair. _Just once. It’s part of the ceremony._

You know what to do. The blade is smooth against your scalp, cutting as close as you can get. As your hair falls away, a lathery clump of things no longer attached to you, a heat grows in your ears. You want to do it again and again.

 _Wait, wait! Offer the razor to your parents!_ the acolyte interjects before you get too excited and do it all yourself.

Your father cuts a rectangle in the hair on the other side of your head. The bluntness is back. _Oh, son_ , your father whispers for the first time.

When it’s your mother’s turn, she rests her hand on your shoulder to steady herself. It’s still this time. She aligns the edge with the baby hair at the base of your neck and slides across. She cries as she smiles for you. You aren’t her baby anymore, but you are still her baby. Her heart is full for you, but you know she must empty it of the wrong things first.

 _Wh—what will we call you?_ Her voice is slick with emotion to match her face.

 _Um_. You stretch your upper lip over your front teeth and look to the acolyte.

He sets his fingers on your forehead. At this point you suspect it’s just for dramatic effect, but in that moment you’re invincible. Beneath that you wonder how often people like you, you-both, can touch. You know there is something inherently sacred about this, so you almost scowl covetously when he lifts his fingers away.

 _Dedue_.

 _Dedue!_ You and your mother and your father join voices inappropriately loudly for the hour. It’s fine, the temple is insulated and the wooden walls are literally logs, plaster, and stone.

The acolyte raises a hand, didactic, authoritative. It quiets you. _You will learn that there are other rules we live by. I can’t tell you what those are, but know— cut your hair like this again on your twentieth birthday and ever onwards. You’re free to do whatever you want until then, but after that, only you or someone like you can cut it._

You thank him and even though you really want to hug him, don’t. The ritual doesn’t call for it and it’s not over until you leave, new.

You spend the ride home spinning your hands about your head, running your fingers over the sides where you no longer have hair, crying joyously for the first and last time in a long while.

*

“So that’s why I want you to do this.” When you’re telling a story, memory takes over your eyes. Visualizing the past helps you better stitch it to the present. That’s why you don’t notice Ashe tearing up until now.

“Dedue.” Ashe says your name like a celebration every time, even when she’s wiping moisture from her eyes. “Of course.”

You thank every god whose name you can remember. You thank the things you know there are gods for whose names are too long or obscure to unwind from memory.

Ashe runs her fingers through your hair. “Puffy. You’re like a dandelion.” She blows through it. 

You scowl at her as she readies the shaving cream, but smile while doing it. That’s how, she pointed out, she knew you loved her. If you’re not careful, you’ll cry again. It’s been a long while.

**Author's Note:**

> Title - “Phenom” by Thao & The Get Down Stay Down


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